Does it matter if what I do doesn’t make a difference?

Moral vegetarians think that we should not eat meat because doing so wrongfully harms animals. One response is that, in any typical case, purchasing and eating meat will do no harm. The animal has already been killed, and markets are not so sensitive that an individual purchase or meat meal will lead to additional animals being killed.

This is one kind of case in which it seems that one’s actions are inconsequential, even though the aggregation of all such actions causes immense harm. This is sometimes called the problem of “causal inefficacy.” The same problem arises with carbon emissions. Taking a drive or a flight seems to make no difference to global warming, and yet we know that the sum of all carbon emissions is wreaking environmental havoc.

Does the apparent harmlessness of our individual actions mean that they are morally permissible? In arguing that they are not, some philosophers have noted that there is a difference between an action making no difference and an action making an imperceptible difference. The aggregation of actions which make no difference will also make no difference. Because the aggregation of meat purchases and carbon emissions makes a big difference, it cannot be the case that all the individual actions make no difference.

This does not prove that every individual action makes an imperceptible difference. It is still possible, even likely, that some individual actions make no difference at all. There may still be moral reason to desist from such actions. First, we do not know which of our individual actions will have an imperceptible effect, and which will have no effect. Second, even some actions that have no (direct) effect do contribute in some sense to the overall problem. For example, performing the action can contribute to normalizing meat purchases or flying.

That said, having a moral reason to desist from an action does not mean, by itself, that we have an all-things-considered duty to refrain from performing the action. Whether there is such a duty requires us to consider other factors. When we do that, we find that despite the similarities between a meat purchase and a flight, there are also important differences.

One difference is that driving or flying can sometimes have important benefits, whereas the benefits of eating meat are typically negligible. To be sure, some drives and flights are frivolous, and we have stronger reason to desist from those, but some are necessary to get to work, to purchase food, or to reach a loved one in need. Some people enjoy the taste of meat, but eating animal flesh is generally not nutritionally necessary. It is normally healthier to eat less of it.

Arguably even more important is the difference in how the problem of causal inefficacy arises in different cases. In the case of carbon emissions, the harm arises only as we scale up the emissions. If your flight was the only one, there really would be no problem. Global warming only results from the aggregation of flights and other emissions.

By contrast, in the case of eating meat, the harm is obscured as one scales up. When an individual meat meal requires killing an animal, the causal connection between the harm and the meal is patent. That connection becomes obscured when meat production reaches industrial proportions.

Consider an analogy involving a human victim. Imagine that a slaveholder acquired a taste for human tears. He flogs his slave and collects the tears that he then imbibes. That would clearly be wrong. Imagine next, that the taste for human tears grows. There is now an industry of slave flogging and tear collection. A customer in the lachrymal aisle of the local grocery store now faces the decision whether to purchase a vial of tears. May he do so, given that his purchase would make little or no difference to the harm that has been or will be done?

A positive answer, I suggest, would be sophistry. If the individual action is impermissible, then it does not become permissible merely because millions of others with similar tastes have collectively generated a causal inefficacy problem.

This does not mean that we may emit carbon with abandon. The fact that millions of other people are also emitting, and that this collectively is causing harm, provides one with a reason, even a duty, to limit one’s emissions. However, that is different from not emitting at all. Because any flight, by itself, is harmless, the total emissions need to be reduced. Individuals have duties to contribute towards this reduction, but that reduction need not be to zero.

Thus, while both eating meat and carbon emissions are alike in manifesting the problem of causal inefficacy, there are also key differences between the two cases. The similarities are what explain why, in both cases, individuals have duties to reduce either consumption or emissions. The differences explain why the extent of the duty varies. Individuals are not duty-bound to be carbon-neutral, although such a reduction would be praiseworthy. By contrast, individuals do have a moral duty to abstain completely from eating meat.

_{Featured image: Het slachthuis by Willem Bastiaan Tholen (1860-1931). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.}